Last week James Randi heard about some
high-end audio cables being sold by the Pear Cable company for $7250 -- $302 a foot. This prompted him
to extend his million-dollar challenge (which for years he's been offering to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal) to anyone who could detect a difference in sound quality to the human ear between Pear's cables and similar cables sold for only $80 by Monster Cable.
The CEO of Pear Cable
has now responded (though not directly to Randi), calling the offer a hoax:
Unfortunately, like most offers of $1 million this one is a hoax. While James Randi is claiming to offer a $1 million dollar prize to differentiate between these speaker cables, by reading the official rules of the challenge, it becomes immediately clear that the offer is not valid. One must be able to "demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability" in order to qualify. Since there is a wealth of scientific information explaining the differences between speaker cables, the offer is not a valid one (and James Randi knows it).
I've posted about ridiculous over-priced
products sold to gullible audiophiles in the past. And ILikeJam has an amusing list of
Really Stupid Audiophile Products, such as the Audioprism CD Stop Light Pen. (It's a magic marker that you're supposed to use to color in the edges of your CDs, because this will somehow make them sound better.)
Of course, because expectation and suggestion play such a huge role in sensory perception, the Pear Cables probably
really do sound better to the people who buy them. But I'm also sure that no difference would be detectable to the human ear in double-blind testing.
Comments
It's funny, Randi has extended the Million Dollar Challenge offer to other ridiculously-overpriced stereo stuff in the past but this time, for some reason, it's getting a lot of attention.
I'm really enjoying watching the guy from Pear try to squirm out of taking the Challenge. If he thinks Randi is lying about offering the money, the best way to prove that would be call Randi's bluff, wouldn't it?
Sharruma, the way the test would be conducted would be to have stereo equipment behind a curtain or in another room from the testee (the speakers would, of course, be where they could hear them). It would be connected to both the expensive cables and cheaper cables with a switch that allows the audio to be switched between them.
The testee, of course, doesn't know which cables the system is using at any given moment. They are asked which way it sounds better (with many repetitions) and their answers are noted.
The choice of cables is determined by a coin flip or the equivalent, so that no pattern can be detected by the testee.
Basically, that's it. A testee will be right about 50% of the time, based just on chance. If a person can really tell the difference, they should do a lot better than 50%.
You have to ask yourself why a company making such a demonstrably superior product wouldn't want to take a simple test that wouldn't take up more than an afternoon when a million dollars was on the line. Why, it's almost as if they know their claims are bogus!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jan/07/badscience.uknews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test
The frequencies of audio are low enough that you would need a very long peice of wire before a quarter wavelegnth would be reached and cause a noticeble degration of the sound quality due to the impedance mismatch.
Middle A is a frequency of 440Hz. The electrical wavelength for middle A is 682 meters, or more than two football fields. The higher frequencies would be affected first, but would still need long lengths of cable.
The advertised cable is probably impedance matched for these long lengths, but would be a waste of money for anyone who owns a home entertainment system with speakers less than 200 feet away.
The romex cable will work well for home use. As the length of the romex increases the ground wire would pick up electrical signals. Those signals might cause distortion.